Sam Jacobs,EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
THIS PAST SEPTEMBER, OUR EDITORS and reporters gathered to debate who should be TIME’s Person of the Year. The annual staff conversation is both entertaining and contentious, as we argue about which one person or group of people, of the nearly 8 billion alive today, had the most influence, for good or ill, on the year. From that first conversation, teams of reporters set out to cover the most promising candidates. The result is the issue you hold in your hands, and the words, photographs, and videos that appear on your screens.
Sam Lansky, the writer of this year’s Person of the Year profile of Taylor Swift, has known the singer for over a decade through his work as an editor. Earlier this fall he visited with Swift at home for her first in-depth conversation with a journalist in nearly four years. With her three Person of the Year covers, photographed by Inez and Vinoodh, Swift makes her fourth, fifth, and sixth appearances on our cover. It’s been 14 years since Swift’s first interview with TIME, when the 19-year-old took questions from her tour bus on Hollywood Boulevard, brushing off concerns about trading a college experience for touring as a musician. “No matter what path you choose,” she said, “you’re going to miss something, and I don’t want to miss this.”
For the 2023 CEO of the Year story, Naina Bajekal and Billy Perrigo visited San Francisco to meet with Sam Altman; he spoke with TIME three times in November, both before and after Altman was removed from and returned to his position leading the world’s most influential AI company. Their profile, accompanied by portraits created by photographer Joe Pugliese, offers a detailed accounting of those tumultuous days.
Sean Gregory has written or co-written all of TIME’s Athlete of the Year profiles since we first created the recognition in 2019. For this year’s edition, Sean interviewed and profiled Lionel Messi, one of the most successful soccer players of all time. The accompanying cover image was created by illustrator (and soccer fan) Neil Jamieson.
Also for this issue, Karl Vick traveled to Israel following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. K
